GAME #3 – NO EXECUTION – Los Angeles-3 Canadiens-0 (Oct. 11, 2018)

Los Angeles scored on the game’s first shot on goal and Kings backup goaltender Jack Campbell recorded his first career shutout in a 3-0 Kings victory. The Canadiens, who trailed 2-0 five minutes into the game, outshot the Kings 40-29.

Jeff Carter led Los Angeles with a goal and two assists.

BLAME IT ON THE CEREMONY?

In his postgame news conference Claude Julien said “We were not on top of our game and it showed.”

After that long pre-game ceremony, the Canadiens never got into it, certainly not in the first five minutes where they found themselves down 2-0 against a veteran team that knows how to protect a lead. For a team that at the best of times has trouble scoring goals, it was simply too steep a hill to climb..

INCOHESIVE

It wasn’t that the Canadiens failed to turn up. I thought they worked hard. Simply put, they were out of synch. Their quickness of execution wasn’t there. Passes were not hitting the tape. Not a lot of net presence, although the Kings might have had a lot to do with that.

Hard to pick on anyone but it was particularly tough night for Phillip Danault who, along with never finding a comfortable gear, turned over the puck all night and wound up winning just one of 13 faceoffs.

Jonathan Drouin was better than we saw in the first two games, but we’re still not getting enough out of him. He still has no real presence in the offensive zone, which is not a good thing.

KOTKANIEMI

It was the Bell Centre debut for the rookie and he was good again. Kotkaniemi was the best Canadiens centre. He led the team with five shots on goal. Again he made intelligent plays. There was a shift midway through the second period where gave himself two scoring chances in a 10 second span that might have turned the game. And, for the second game in a row he won more faceoffs than he lost – 6 of 11.

THE BLUELINE

Noah Juulsen was named the third star of the game. That was based on his game-high seven hits. He also blocked three shots and he gave the team a steady presence back there. Mike Reilly had a rare shorthanded breakaway in the first period. By far, the Reilly/Juulsen pairing was the Canadiens best.

After two pretty good outings, Jordie Benn had a rough night.

IN GOAL

We all know on most nights if Carey Price lets in more than two goals odds are the Canadiens offense isn’t going to be able to let him off-the-hook. As it was, one goal was enough for the Kings.

I thought Carey could have stopped the game’s opening goal. After that he was very good. The second goal was the result of a total screwup behind the net that led to a quick out. Price still hasn’t seen the Carter goal.

AMONG OTHER THINGS

….Was it really necessary for the game officials to put everyone through that long NO GOAL, GOAL, NO GOAL delay in the third period? It was clear that Andrew Shaw touched the goaltender from the outside. Why was it necessary to go through two full reviews in order to come to that conclusion?

Useless statistic from the analytics crowd – Canadiens dominated the Corsi numbers 62.22% to 37.78. More indicative of the way the game went; the Kings had 12 high danger scoring chances to the Canadiens 7.

….Paul Byron seems determined to earn his new contract right from the git-go. Not only was he second on the team with four shots on goal, he was also second to Juulsen with six hits.

….Mike Reilly led the Canadiens in ice time again at 23:52. Second was Petry at 21:00. Top forward in ice time was Tomas Tatar at 19:38 including 5:00 on the power play.

MOVING ON

The Canadiens will face the Pittsburgh Penguins for the second time in a week on Saturday night at the Bell Centre. We might see Tomas Plekanec play in his 999th career regular season game in that one. Or maybe Nikita Scherbak, who is rumoured to be on the trade block.
After that it’s home games against Detroit and St. Louis Monday and Wednesday before heading to Ottawa a week Saturday.

time to give Pleks his 2 games to get to 1000 and then waiver him, Benn,Schlemko and Alzner….also
we should not be wavering young players if they are part of our future….does not matter if we trade then we will get a player back and unless we plan to get rid of the terrible 3 on defense we are no better off

My impression is the team did not perform that bad in the game.
They had plenty of chances but could not score. This could be a problem
this year. They can skate with anyone but can they score?
Felt bad their offense was so inept- hurt to see them shutout on opening
night after a fine recognition of the 93′ Stanley Cup winners. I witnessed
that epic series with the Kings. Saw them win the Cup while visiting in
Vancouver.

Since Bergy has been here this team has been in the ass end of the league in scoring goals. He has done little to address that other than had “Karacter” guys who score twice a year and it doesn’t matter who’s net they put it in….our’s or their’s the result is the same –> Low Scoring games. But yah we put 5 past the Pens in game 2 and 7 against another weak sister in the Wings last night.
Last June with 11 picks Bergy decided to fix our long overdue Centre problem for the 1st & 2nd lines by drafting 7 centres. Great that’s fixed! This coming season he’ll probably use 4 picks to try and find a more than capable partner for Weber. But what this team needs to actually do is get more TALENT as in offensive talent for the Top 6. We need more fire power up front. We have a pop gun Offense but Betgy thinks we’re great because we scored 7 against another lower tier team. He has a short memory of only 2 goals against Leafs where we could have beaten then if we had more scoring power. We could have beaten the Kings if we could have scored. So Bergy start looking for some shooters that will score and properly fit in our Top 6.

I’m glad someone else said it about Mete. He and Benn are our weak links on the blueline. There is no way Mete should have ever been on the 1st pairing. He’s like Drouin…….give them wide open ice when they have the puck and they look good. I’ll give Mete credit that he does take S physical beating out there along the boards. Drouin has zero compete when it comes to body contact. But back to Mete. Yes, he can look Goode and effective skating north of our blueline heading towards th other end. But inside our blueline he gets lost in the traffic way too often. He gets himself out of position on a regular basis leading Petry to move over trying to pinch and that leaves the back door wide open. I think it was the Pens 2nd goal last Saturday he got lost with Malkin at the blueline and chased after him but Malkin had dished off leaving the winger a free path to the net. Petry pinched to help out and the Pens singer passed to a guy coming down the middle and it was in the net. In the camera view behind the net you could see that Pens player walking in but none of our forwards came back to pick up their man. Instead they were watching the puck.
Mete’s lack of size is a detriment to him on the top 2 pairings. Bigger forwards are making him pay a price along the boards by physically crunching him. In front of the net he gets out muscled for position very easily. Bergy needs to be looking at better options……..not named Alzner.

** I have to take it back about the play of Reilly on Defense. He has really improved under the teaching from Luke Richardson. Last year when we picked him up he was just like Mete. Great going forward from our blueline but not so good inside our blueline. Well he has picked up his game in our end. He is really playing with a lot of confidence. He is very deserving of the ice time he is getting.

Lack of Power Play: last season starts the start of the year our PP sucked too! It was easy to Defense because all we did was move the puck around and kill time and then try and set up Weber for a blast. Trouble was that teams started adapting to our PP after he had his hot start 2 yrs ago when he first got here. So teams played their top man closer to him to block or poke check him. He started rushing his shots and the accuracy level was going down. Once he got hurt we changed up. Petry ended up in Weber’s spot on the left point. But when teams overloaded on him he moved the puck diagonally towards the right face off circle. Because that’s where Gally27 would move to from the right point. So now we don’t have: Weber, Max67 and Gally27. We have Tatar in Max67’s place, Petry in again for Weber and Drouin in for Gally27…….. But he stays stationary at the point. He will not dip down closer to the net to shoot so that leaves us once again easy to defend.
On Saturday vs Pens Muller changed the PP format in the 2nd period by having both Tatar and Domi behind the net. They were getting the puck behind the net and shooting it straight back out for one timers. It didn’t work great because we only had one guy in front. I think if we played that 2-2-1 we have a better chance of scoring. So if you have Tatar behind the goal line on the goalie’s stick side and Domi across from him behind the net on the goalie’s glove side. In that spot 7 – 12 feet just off the net you have Gally11 facing Tartar and Drouin facing Domi similar to how Gally11 is positioned. Petry stays on the point and moves side to side. So if Tartar has the puck he passes it out to Gally11 who can shoot right away or: pass it back to Tatar, pass it to Drouin or pass back to Petry for a shot. When this play starts with Tatar As soon as he pass up to Gally11 Domi moves to crease/post area for a rebound from one of the shots. This always gives us the extra man and should be more potent/successful for us in scoring PP goals.